[math4] FourthGradeMath Digest, Vol 2, Issue 16

[Caroline Meeks]

>
>
> I spent a couple of years writing K-12 math ed software while in college,
> (almost 20 years ago now, so I no longer have any of the old software, and
> my
> recall of the details is fuzzy) and one of the things I learned is that
> giving a programmer a task like "write a program to teach this concept" is
> rarely very effective.  What comes out is something that makes sense to the
> guy/gal who wrote it, but isn't necessarily at all enlightening to the
> target
> audience.
>
> What did work well was to get a small number of outstanding math teachers
> in a
> room along with a couple of math ed-focused university profs and a
> developer
> or two to keep the discussion within the bounds of feasibility.  We'd have
> the teachers discuss how they taught concepts and then brainstorm as a
> group
> on how to use the interactive and dynamic capabilities of software to
> enhance
> the proven teaching approaches.  This didn't take long; in the course of a
> two-hour meeting we typically scoped out a dozen or more program concepts
> in
> adequate detail for the developers to run with them.
>
> I think a mailing list discussion would work just as well.  The key is to
> have
> some really good fourth-grade math teachers involved.  If the project
> doesn't
> have any yet, we need to recruit some.
>
>        Shawn.
>


I think this is great because it shapes our dilemma.

Greg's point is that if we use the standard process that Shawn used in
industry, we'll never get anywhere. Its not scalable, its expensive and
isn't crowd sourcing friendly.

But as Shawn and others have pointed out just pointing technical people to
something they understand (like 4th grade math) and saying make content is
very unlikely to get good results. Maybe its not quite monkey's typing
Shakespeare but its still not an effiecient way to get excellent content.
Furthermore, the programmer who wrote the useless activity is Shawn's
example is probably going to notice.  But if there is no feedback mechanism
for improving they will likely just quit.  We need  a method that both
improves our odds of good content at the beginning and even more importantly
supports learning by the activity creators in a process of continual
improvement.

I am pretty sure no one on the planet knows how to crowd source excellent
instructional materials yet.  I suggest adding contributing to figuring this
out as an explict goal for your project.

An idea I had was creating a set of questions that developers would answer
before they start work to help them reflect on the pedagogy and design.
Maybe there would be some way to share these answers and get feedback.

Thoughts on questions include.


   - What standards does your activity support?
   - How will you know the student has mastered these from this activity?
   - Is there an artifact created suitable for a portfolio?
   - What prior knowledge does a student need to be successful with this
   activity?
   - How is this activity different from a traditional text book/worksheet?
   - What learning styles would especially benefit from this activity? What
   learning styles and/or disabilities will probably not benefit from this
   activity?
   - What common misconceptions and/or problem solving strategy bugs might a
   student have in relation to this standard? How might this activity help
   correct these?
   - What will make this activity engaging and interesting?
   - How is collaboration used?
   - Does this activity encourage meta-cognition, does the student think
   about their thinking?
   - How can students take this activity to the next level and expand and
   learn beyond the standards?
   - How can students express their creativity and/or construct their own
   tools?

I'm thinking we want to challenge and support people to go beyond the flash
card but clearly we don't want to get people stuck feeling like they have to
always create an activity that does everything.

thoughts?




>
>
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> End of FourthGradeMath Digest, Vol 2, Issue 16
> **********************************************
>



-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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